FIRST
MANTLE

First Mantle.

Earth slowly rotates in a quiet star field, with oceans, continents, moving clouds and a thin blue atmosphere.

The surface opens.

Thick, irregular pieces of Earth's surface separate and tumble independently. Smaller rocks drift between them, revealing a second, rocky layer.

The mantle.

The surface fragments drift away as the mantle rotates. Olive-green and dark mineral grains evoke recovered samples of upper-mantle peridotite, shown under illustrative lighting.

Closer to the rock.

Rocky fragments drift outward as the viewpoint approaches a location near the mantle's exterior. The view changes scale from the globe to a diamond-bearing rock sample.

A diamond within.

A natural-shaped diamond remains partly enclosed in olive-green rock. The rock tumbles and drifts like an asteroid while the camera follows, keeping it centered as smaller fragments pass. Scroll backward to return to the Earth.

//// FIRST MANTLE

First Mantle.

From Earth in space to a diamond within its mantle. The surface opens, mineral-rich rock breaks apart, and the viewpoint moves into a small rock sample holding a natural-shaped crystal.

The breakup, change of scale and asteroid-like flight are artistic transitions. The final view represents a diamond-bearing rock specimen.

Science & sources

The mantle surrounds the core and is mostly solid today. Most gem diamonds formed later within the mantle from carbon-bearing fluids or melts. Diamonds also occur in some meteorites, but their origins remain debated; the two histories are not an established direct delivery pathway.

The olive-green, dark green and brown grain textures are inspired by recovered upper-mantle peridotite viewed under ordinary light. Mineralogy changes with depth; this texture does not represent the appearance of the entire mantle. The diamond's octahedral form illustrates one natural crystal habit.

AMNH — Recovered mantle minerals ↗

Rock texture: cropped from Shannon Heinle's Kilbourne Hole specimen photograph, GeoDIL 2300, dedicated to the public domain under CC0. Surface relief is illustrative.

NASA — Accretion and differentiation ↗ USGS — The mostly solid mantle ↗ GIA — Diamond formation in the deep Earth ↗

Earth's surface uses a NASA Blue Marble composite by Reto Stöckli / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The source image is converted to WebP. Clouds and atmosphere are illustrative; the visualization is not a NASA endorsement.

Credits & licenses 
FIRST MANTLE — THIRD-PARTY NOTICES

# First Mantle — third-party material

Checked 9 November 2026. These notices apply to the listed third-party material, not to the project as a whole. No paid font, stock image, remote font service or animation subscription is required.

## Fonts

DM Sans, normal weights 400, 500 and 600, Latin WOFF2 files from Fontsource 5.3.0. Copyright 2014 The DM Sans Project Authors. Licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1; the files are unmodified and the complete notice is in `licenses/DM-Sans-OFL.txt`.

Source: https://github.com/googlefonts/dm-fonts
License: https://github.com/google/fonts/blob/main/ofl/dmsans/OFL.txt

The secondary monospace face is supplied by the visitor's operating system; no proprietary monospace font file is distributed.

## Earth texture

NASA Blue Marble (2002), land surface, shallow water and shaded topography. Credit: Reto Stöckli / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; enhancements and compositing by Robert Simmon. The source composite was converted to WebP. Clouds and atmosphere are original procedural illustrations.

Source: https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/the-blue-marble-true-color-global-imagery-at-1km-resolution/
Original map: https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/57000/57752/land_shallow_topo_2048.jpg
Use guidance: https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/

NASA is acknowledged as the source of the texture only. NASA did not review or endorse First Mantle or this visualization. No NASA logo, insignia or identifiable person is included.

## Rock textures

Shannon Heinle, Kilbourne Hole specimen, GeoDIL number 2300, Geoscience Digital Image Library / Dexter Perkins. The photograph is dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. A region at x=1430, y=70, width=840, height=840 was cropped, resized to 768 square pixels, border-blended and compressed to WebP. Bump and roughness maps were derived from luminance. This is an illustrative rendering of recovered specimen material, not an in-situ image of the entire mantle.

Source: https://geodil.dperkins.org/h/2300.html
License record: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kilbourne_Hole_(GeoDIL_number_-_2300).jpg
CC0: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

## Software

Three.js 0.186.1, including its imported geometry, environment and postprocessing helpers: MIT, complete notice in `licenses/Three-MIT.txt`.

Vite 8.3.5 is development/build tooling. Its core MIT notice is retained in `licenses/Vite-MIT.txt`. It is not a server dependency of the finished website. The build does not ship Vite's development client or module-preload polyfill. Development dependencies and their own notices are supplied by `npm ci` from the pinned lockfile.

GSAP and the unused font families have been removed. Scroll interpolation and interface controls are project code using browser APIs.

The First Mantle wordmark is live DM Sans typography. The favicon uses outlined DM Sans initials with project vector decoration. No imagery, logo, audio, video or source code from the reference Igloo website is included.




---------------- DM-Sans-OFL.txt ----------------
Copyright 2014 The DM Sans Project Authors (https://github.com/googlefonts/dm-fonts) DMSans-Italic[opsz,wght].ttf: Copyright 2014 The DM Sans Project Authors (https://github.com/googlefonts/dm-fonts)

This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.
This license is copied below, and is also available with a FAQ at:
http://scripts.sil.org/OFL


-----------------------------------------------------------
SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE Version 1.1 - 26 February 2007
-----------------------------------------------------------

PREAMBLE
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---------------- Three-MIT.txt ----------------
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---------------- Vite-MIT.txt ----------------
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